


sometimes, i feel yellow

by lushology



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Dreaming, First POV, M/M, Mention of Death, Pope POV, Second POV, can't sleep, jj backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:48:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26635387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lushology/pseuds/lushology
Summary: Sometimes I feel yellow.I am standing in the kitchen, hands on the counter, staring out the window at the sky.Thick soupy yellows and watery ones that spread far across every little thing.  Corns and suns and sand at the bottom of the ocean. Nail polish and wide skirt dresses and pens and cereal your mother buys.
Relationships: JJ/Pope (Outer Banks)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	sometimes, i feel yellow

**Author's Note:**

> check out my tumblr, midsommers for more!

You are on a swing. The world is pushing against you. You are becoming one with the sky, your bones falling to the ground.

This is what what dying feels like. It feels good for a moment, all high and light, then, you swing back down and hit rocks. Everything shatters. Your feet crumple first, the your legs and suddenly your body folds into nothing.

You get back on the swing. You know nothing but infinity. It starts again.

For a moment, you can smell your mother’s cooking and you forget you don’t have a mother.

There is a hole in your body band aids cannot fix. You are only a boy, so empty, so drained and filled with nothing. Everything echos inside you and you can’t figure how you got so hollow.

Calloused hands, sleep deprived eyes, aching stomachs. This is not living.

It always feels like its about to rain but it never does.

Your lips are chewed raw and there is blood under your nails.

Sometimes you feel a little whole but mostly, it feels broken.

Snapped twigs abandoned on sandy shorelines and gravel paths with entrances marked with war aged trees.

A camera is smashed into the pavement, no more memories.

Everything is licked by fire. The flames don’t go out.

You are on a swing. The world is forcing you into the blank sky. Your skin melts and your skeleton is left out to dry.

Everyone has a silhouette. Not you. You leave no mark. _You are nothing_ , as they say.

You can see your childhood home in the distance, behind the garden, close enough to touch but leaning away from you. It does not want you no matter how much you want it.

Your fingers are sticky and for a moment you can’t figure out why until you remember you are scratching your skin until your body is covered in blood. Small wounds let out waterfalls.

You can’t get off the swing. Your teeth hurt from gum you don’t remember chewing. Your mouth tastes like dry clementines and medicine and ash.

The swings stretch for miles but there is only you. (You are utterly alone.) For a second, you wonder whether you can move to another swing. (You stay put, don’t bother trying. Maybe next time, when the sky is lighter.)

The air smells like round pasta and tear drenched line paper. Smiles across the skies and mountains that groan in the mornings.

You tumble off the swing, into the wet dirt. You get back up. You start again.

All you know is infinity.

  


* * *

  


JJ smiles when it’s just us. All happy, too sweet to ignore. 

I feel so slow. Everything feels so slow. JJ is trying. He is smiling, talking more than he always does, making sure I’m not hungry, not cold.

No, I’m okay. I’m fine. It’s alright. Don’t worry about me.

He is trying too hard. He is doing what he thinks I want. I don’t want that. I want him.

He doesn’t understand. I want to love all of him. All the pieces he loves, all the pieces he hates so much he locks them away. Those pieces deserve love too.

Sometimes I feel yellow.

I am standing in the kitchen, hands on the counter, staring out the window at the sky.

Thick soupy yellows and watery ones that spread far across every little thing. Corns and suns and sand at the bottom of the ocean. Nail polish and wide skirt dresses and pens and cereal your mother buys.

The oven is beeping. JJ shuts it off.

He comes in and stands behind me, wraps his arms around my waist, puts his head on my shoulder. I can feel every breath he breathes out, every sigh. He fits perfectly into me.

I don’t know why I feel this way, nobody else does. JJ doesn’t ask why.

He is making me see stars.

_Him. Him. Him._

I wanted him to be angry at me for feeling like this. His calm was angry. I wanted JJ to shout, hate me a little in his soul. This was JJ. Only angry sometimes, never at me.

He kissed the palms of my hands and held them tight.

“Its okay,” he says. “To be upset.”

I hate this feeling that’s inside me. I hate his calm.

My body slumps and I fall into JJ. My cheeks are all hot. The room is too hot. He doesn’t try and kiss me but I wish he would. He tells me to breath instead.

One two three. One in one out. Again again again.

JJ cares. Its strange to think how someone like JJ, drowned in loss and broken things, can try again just to love me. Hold me tighter tighter tighter, trying. (That’s the wonder of it, isn’t it? He _tries_.)

He is fixing my broken pieces.

  


* * *

  


There are three freckles on his hip bone. Three small boats in an ocean of skin. I kiss them all.

He traces over the crescent scar on my back. JJ is all fuzzy around the edges, cheeks flushed from the wine we shared. He gets like this, all soft and lazy, tired, eyes barely open, mouth slightly closed. I kiss all the giggles off his mouth.

“Where did you get this,” he asks.

“My grandfather’s stupid fucking dog,” I say. He laughs.

Love is not all knowing. It tries to be. It is all naked, trying to understand all the mysteries under skin and veins.

There’s a scar on his wrist. I don’t want to know where it’s from

(Before, when I couldn’t sleep, I would stare up at the ceiling, out the window, go downstairs and listen to the kitchen shake. Now, I can turn into JJ and let him hold me. Love has made me soft.)

I cannot sleep.

“What’s this,” I ask JJ, pointing to the almost round scar on his cheek. Its impossibly small but I’m surprised I never noticed it. There’s one by his ear too, that I didn’t see before this.

JJ smells like sunken ships devoured by waves and clean bed sheets. (This is my favorite smell.) There’s dirt under his nails. There’s a lake in his eyes.

JJ smiles all sad, like rain, shrugs the best he can. That’s all I get.

Everything feels like a secret.

“Can I show you something?” JJ asks. I nod. I wasn’t sleeping anyways.

He pulls me out of bed. He’s wearing my sweater.

  


* * *

  


Everything is covered in goosebumps.

In the clearing of trees behind the house, there is three gravestones, one brand new, the others crumbling with time. The crack in the forest opens up to new winds. I shiver. This feels like an unhealed wound, glowing red, on cold skin.

There’s a tombstone for someone named Molly. Aged eleven.

JJ says nothing. I turn to the other grave. The leaves crack under my shoes.

“My father died after Molly did. He had been dying a long time but she finished him off.” No sadness in his voice. I can taste the spice from dinner on my lips and wonder, only for a second, if JJ can too.

“My mother died just after I met you.” I can’t figure out why he’s telling me this, especially now, when I am trying to find sleep. The urge to vomit bubbles in my throat, I fight it back down into my stomach. He grabs my hand and I grip it tight. I wish I had a coat.

We stand there. I turn, kiss him. I can taste the wind in his mouth.

* * *

  


I dream. I do not want to.

_Are you drowning in the ocean or in his eyes?_

There’s a cake on the table, perfectly decorated. I sit down, take a bite. The icing cracks and the floor breaks.

I need to grab something. There is nothing. Something creaks, I don’t know what. The sky is black, the dirt is orange. I vomit. Flowers sprout.

There is no JJ, only the jacket he likes. I put it on. I am warm. The ground steadies, just a little. My head stops spinning.

Running. I am running from something.

I stop. There is nothing behind me.

A girl is sitting by the pool. Long hair the color of the stars, her dress dipping into the ground. She smells like cherry ice pops and watermelon juice. She smiles. Her voice sounds like thunder.

“Are you drowning in the ocean or in his eyes?”

I can see the freckles in his hip, the three little boats.

In his eyes, I think.

  


* * *

  


I wake up.

I remember, when I first moved in, I did not love him because I did not know him. I loved what he did for me, the risk he took by letting me in, letting me stay. We fell into routine. He made dinner on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. I made dinner Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We went out on Saturday and ordered in whenever we felt lazy. I did laundry at the end of the week and he did his smack dab in the middle. His clothing mixed into mine and we did it all in one load. He let me pick whichever room I wanted and stay up as late as I wanted and drive the car, all I had to do was ask. 

Everything finally felt good. 

We mixed well together.

I remember when he took me out, finally, after waiting for so long.

Halfway through dinner, JJ had spoken up.

“Would you like to go on a date?”

There’s a bruise on his cheek, a brown flower, that wasn’t there last night. 

Dinner is soup. My turn. I didn’t go out to get another and there wasn’t much in the kitchen. We needed to go grocery shopping. 

“With you?” He nodded. I stuttered. “Sure, where?”

JJ had shrugged “I can figure something out,” he said “Unless you have an idea.” I shook my head. I’ve only been on one or two dates. I don’t know what people like to do. 

I didn’t say anything else. He said: “Are you free tonight?” I can only nod. This whole interaction is so odd. It’s not the kind of thing I would ever expect from JJ, or anyone else.

I lied. I’ve never been on any dates.

JJ smiled at me then, a real one. A rare occurrence, but always a welcome one. 

I don’t want to spend the rest of dinner in silence so I say: “We need groceries.” JJ nodded.

“Anything specific?” He asked.

“Well, I had a few ideas for my days, and then whatever you want.”

Jesus Christ. So domestic, like a married couple that still loves each other. “Make sure to get two loaves of bread. We eat them too quickly.” He smiled. I offered a half lipped smile back, not reaching my eyes, though I pray he doesn’t notice. 

He goes off, talking about a book, something that happened, I can’t tell. He laughs and I join in, only half alert of the story he’s telling. He throws up his arms to gesture to something and I nod. He feels so alive.

I had never wanted to be loved by anyone more.

We’re disasters, him and I.

  


* * *

  


I go back to sleep. I dream. There is a corn maze.

  


* * *

  


I walk to the maze, take a deep breath and step inside.

Every outside sound disappears. I can only hear the plants moving in the wind and the sound of my own breath. The wind feels a little colder and something clicks in my head. It’s an ocean of calm, the fields grown high enough to frame the sky. It’s just you and heaven. Alone.

(I don’t like alone. But I like this.)

This is not fall. This is winter in an orange coat. Autumn is thick with family. Winter takes the long path home, all alone. Everything smells like dirt.

Everything everything everything. This is the only word I know.

Go home, the wind is saying. What is home. Is it JJ or is it with Mom? Is it the town? Does it not exist?

I go home. Wherever that is.

  


* * *

  


It’s morning. All I can think of is Molly. Why he never mentioned it, and why then.

JJ smiles. He is made of secrets.

He is homes and I am drowning in his eyes.


End file.
